Swan Chinese Restaurant Epping — Restaurant in Epping Forest

I've used this place for some time, but the customer service is terrible. I recently ordered Singapore Vermicelli Noodles with extra flavour—which, to be clear, means adding extra Singapore paste, the key ingredient that gives the dish its distinct taste. I know this because I used to cook and serve the exact same dish in my own shop. Instead of fulfilling this simple request, they sent me completely plain noodles with no flavour at all. Anyone familiar with the dish can tell by looking at it—normally, it has a rich yellow-orange colour, but what I received was pale and flavourless.

When I called to address the issue, the person on the phone kept making excuses, saying, "This is why we don’t make changes to dishes." I explained that I wasn’t asking for some complicated adjustment—just extra flavour, as in extra Singapore paste—but instead, I got no flavour at all. His response? "You have one idea, and the chef has another. That's why we don't make changes to order". In my head I'm thinking we had it many times before. In my opinion, mistakes happen because they don’t seem to have good communication between the front desk and the chef. Instead of acknowledging the issue, he kept going on about how the conversation was wasting his time—while ironically dragging it out himself. He even mentioned that if it were a busy Friday or Saturday, they wouldn’t have even accepted my order.

In the end, he agreed to send a replacement via delivery, but he didn’t sound happy about it—almost as if he was doing me a favour for fixing their mistake. A professional business would simply take responsibility—offer a credit, remake the dish properly, or redeliver it without attitude.

I’ve owned and operated shops myself, including a Chinese takeaway, and this is not how you handle customers. This place has clearly grown too comfortable with its customer base and no longer cares about delivering quality service. The arrogance is what’s most disappointing.

I’ve attached a picture so you can all see what they call Singapore Vermicelli Noodles with extra flavour (I requested no veg). You can judge...

The swan was my local Chinese, both take away and dine in. The food used to be amazing and so did the service, unfortunately this has changed not for the better. The take away always seemed to get colder and colder each time and always forgetting the curry sauce (asking me to remind them and they will give me it for free next time - what good is that, when they keep forgetting?), then we decided to dine in even though every single time we had dined in we would get over charged on the bill. When we dined in there was a young girl )known to the restaurant) sat in the restaurant who came up to our table and started eating food off of our table (this girl I think had autism so it was not her fault and her father kept going behind into the kitchen as he knew the staff) this was a very uncomfortable experience which resulted in us leaving the restaurant as the staff just watched this happen and we did ask the girl politely to return to her table. We then requested the bill from the waitress who had sat and watched this happen presented us with a bill in Chinese, I requested this in English as this seemed very expensive considering we did not have alcohol, once we received this we were charged for 4 additional cokes at £5 each. I told the waitress this was incorrect and she was quick to tell me her calculator was broken (which funnily enough it was broken the last time I went in there and they tried charging me for 3 bottles of Prosecco when only ordering 1).

Such a shame as the swan used to be amazing, but has gone downhill massively. They are very over priced, the service is so poor and to top it all off they love to over charge you hoping you don’t notice - I think they forget who their regular customers are or just assume you are stupid.

Not spending anymore of my money in this place and will be going to May in Epping as there Food is lovely and not as over priced as the swan. They seem to treat their customers better when you dine in also and don’t try to push their luck with over charging you for food and drinks you...

Used to for years used to be good, lately hit and a miss but after my last experience never again guy was blunt and rude over the phone and encouraged me to order more despite me ordering the same stuff in the past and haven’t had a problem but couldn’t explain that to him as he was constantly saying over and over again ‘you need to order more, have you decided yet’ till I add another item then call ended while he mumbled what it cost. 10-15 minute later I get a call to say he made a mistake and I had to pay around the £35 mark can’t remember exact amount but I asked if I could go back to original order as i didn’t want the extra he wasn’t happy about that but after going backwards and forwards he agreed to take it off the bill. When the food came I was quite upset as the noodles were bland both portions and the chicken ball was pink but lucky the spring rolls were good and the extra spring rolls I cancelled due to their error they put in as a sign of good will. Lucky they did as that was the only thing I could eat as was cooked properly. Hence never again I loved the spring rolls but Everything else was bad and have had a few occasions where this has happened e.g. items missing, cold, undercooked, dry, hardly any meat on duck so much has gone wrong over the last few years so I have decided to not have the disappointment of looking at something I can’t eat...